Southwest to arrive at Logan on Sunday

Southwest Airlines to land at Logan
By Donna Goodison | Wednesday, August 12, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Business & Markets

Southwest Airlines starts service at Logan International Airport on Sunday after circling around Boston for years with flights out of smaller regional airports.

The nation’s largest discount carrier joins low-fare carriers JetBlue [JBLU], Sun Country Airlines, AirTran Airways and Virgin America at Logan.

“It’s another low-cost carrier, which is good for the customer,” said Ed Freni, Massport’s director of aviation. “It gives us a more expanded menu for flight choices, plus the pricing that will come out of it because of the competition that we see happening already.”

Southwest will fly an abbreviated schedule Sunday to Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and Chicago Midway Airport, before starting its five daily nonstop trips to each destination Monday.

In mid-April, Southwest began selling one-way nonstop flights to Chicago Midway starting at $89 and to Baltimore-Washington International for $49. But it dropped the latter to $39 after JetBlue announced later that month that it would start non-stop daily service to the airport in September.

It was only a few years ago that Logan was sort of the “stepchild” to cheap airlines, said Tom Parsons, CEO and founder of discount travel Web site Bestfares.com.

“Everybody was flying around you,” he said. “Southwest was going to Providence, Hartford and Manchester, and you had all the good-old-boy legacy airlines. Now you’ve got every Tom, Dick and Harry low-cost airline coming into your market except for Frontier.”

Southwest, which this week raised its bid to $170 million for the bankrupt Frontier, has no immediate plans to expand its schedule at Logan. The airline sold out its Sunday flights, and bookings for the rest of next week have been stronger that predicted.

“So far, demand has been great, and we take that into consideration when making plans and adjustments to our service overall,” spokesman Paul Flaningan said.
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